Bob Brown

He was a mentally unstable father of five living on the streets of Poland when he was unwittingly lured to smuggle 4kg of heroin into China, say the relatives of Briton Akmal Shaikh, who was executed by lethal injection at the end of 2009.

Shaikh had travelled to Urumqi in 2007 on the promise that he would be made into a pop star with his song Come Little Rabbit, which he imagined could bring about world peace.

After a half hour trial in 2008 he was convicted of drug smuggling and handed the mandatory sentence of death.

Laurie Oakes: What's wrong with the way asylum seekers are treated in Indonesia at the moment? What sort of ground rules do we need?

Bob Brown: Well, from the newspaper reports, they're imprisoned in pretty appalling conditions compared to that which Australia - Australians generally would - accept. I hope that, ah, Prime Minister Rudd will be calling on his Indonesian counterpart, in Thailand, to sign the international refugee conventions which guide basic ground rules for fast processing of asylum seekers - sending back those who are not genuine, but ensuring a future away from the threat that they've fled for those who are genuine.

Lobbyists for the big polluters are crawling the halls of Parliament every day, but ordinary voters haven't had the same access or influence. Until now.

The Rudd Government was elected with a mandate to face up to climate change. Yet the legislation they've created locks in climate failure. It currently promises $16 billion to polluters, penalises ordinary Australians for reducing their emissions and sets pollution reduction targets way too low to stop climate change: just 5% by 2020.

The Greens Senators are facing up to climate change with the Safe Climate Bill. Now it's your turn - how will you face up?

Pemba Dorjie Sherpa, the world's fastest climber of Mt Everest, was in Canberra yesterday making a plea to Australia to reverse climate change which is melting 40 Himalayan glaciers on river headwaters upon which one billion people rely.

But, as I've just told the BBC, the Rudd government's bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by only 5 per cent by 2020 would help lock in dangerous climate change (and accelerate the melting of the world's glaciers).